She has kept her head lowered… to give him a chance to come closer. But he could not, for lack of courage. She turns and walks away.

Do you know what people did in the old days when they had secrets they didn’t want to share? They’d climb a moutain, find a tree, carve a hole in it, whisper the secret into the hole and cover it up with mud. That way, nobody else would ever learn the secret.

Take care. Maybe one day you’ll escape your past. If you do, look for me.

I feel strange today. Loathsome, absurd, haunted.

I watch Wong Kar Wai’s films a lot. I’ve seen In the Mood for Love and 2046 over twenty times. I truly never grow tired of them. And then there’s Chungking Express, Happy Together, Ashes of Time, and Days of Being Wild. The other ones i care much less for, but they’re certainly worth watching. But these ones, like watching my own brain unfurl, my whole life caught in the movies, and all encapsulated so well, especially by In the Mood for Love and 2046, which are just about perfect.

I watched them the other day. And i feel like watching them again. They help me when i’m lonely. They’re better than ballet.

Still recovering, the hole inside me closing nicely, leaving a little scar like a puckered mouth. Monday i’ll be getting the staples removed, which sounds disgusting. So it goes.

Sometimes i write stories and believe that i’ve done them well. I’m doing a final run through of my first novel and getting it ready for queries, but i ran across my favorite published short today. I’m still very proud of it, almost a year later.

He lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the night fall apart outside his window. It buckles, the night, under the weight of relentless clouds and a forgotten moon and the sleeping stars that fall in slight drops of water to puddle and reflect the shores they sailed from for lightyears. He still wears an ill-fitting suit of navy blue and his eyelids fail to meet for longer than the instants of blinks. He rises and looks out his window, pushes it open, and catches the rain in his palm.

On the street, the rain beats against his face and he squints through the splintering sky. A face glows in the clouds above and he ascertains the position of the flowering gibbous. A face like the smile of god or the glower of the devil. Which, he cannot say. A grumble, a crack, and a bright gash appears in the sky ripping the darkness apart in a photonic ablution whose afterimage remains in his eye for minutes, stained there until he returns his gaze to a featureless night shrouded by the rain.

The witching hour and the streets are a mix of congestion and desertion. Haggard faces stumble over the pavement, taxis screech like jaguars, and the high heels clack clack clack, echoing off the buildings, creating a cacophony with the thunder, the collapsing sky, and the squeals of girls too drunk or young or both holding tiny purses like umbrellas.

The water level is too high and the bridge cannot be underpassed and it threatens the overpassage with slapping waves and rapturous current. Visible beneath a streetlight, her face lit, stands a lady on the rail of the bridge. She frowns and her long white dress clings to her, an angel emerging from the river just feet below. Her hair is a mop of blonde painted dark by the fallen sky. She turns her head and sees him seeing her just feet away. Her eyes are electric green, flashing like christmas bulbs. She looks back to the torrent. He asks her what she is doing.

Killing myself, she says.

Why?

She scowls and meets his dull grey eyes, Because I no longer want to live. Her voice is not a whisper or a torturous lament, but brazen and full and low.

The water’s too high, he says. It’ll just push you down river. You might live.

She sighs, her eyes drooping, the water flowing in rivers down her face, and hops down the sidewalk. She stares at him through the curtain of rain with those vibrant green eyes that wilt men.

He stares back and asks if she wants to get some coffee. She laughs and laughs, but he remains where he stands and puts his hands in his pockets like it will keep them dry. She cannot stop laughing, but she asks him his name and he tells her, Daniel.

Well, Daniel, tonight’s not such a good night to die, but it may be a good one to drink coffee.